Godzilla has made something of a comeback in recent years. Ever since he stomped back into Western cinemas in 2014, it seems the monstrous reptile has barely left the screen. But while Godzilla’s destructive antics are easy entertainment, the creature itself has always walked a line between chaotic spectacle and deeper metaphor.

This year the beastie turns 70, and as the world continues to face challenges concerning international wars and environmental degradation, the colossal monster may still have warnings to offer us.

King of monsters or metaphors? 

The original Godzilla, or “Gojira”, was inspired by the 1953 American film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. In this early monster movie, the detonation of an atomic bomb releases a frozen dinosaur-like creature that goes on to wreak havoc across New York City. The Beast was the first movie to popularise the idea that nuclear weapons could “awaken” something monstrous, but it would not be the last.

A year later, Godzilla appeared for the first time in the eponymous 1954 film directed by Ishiro Honda and its connection to the consequences of nuclear war was more obvious. The giant monster was intended to symbolize the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the US military in 1945. Even its textured skin was meant to represent the keloid scars of those who survived the attacks, as Godzilla itself had been disturbed by the testing of a nuclear weapon in the South Pacific.

The creature’s appearance was supposed to evoke the bleak and tragic horrors felt in post-war Japan, but this type of representation was lost on American audiences as the film’s political content (around 20 minutes of footage) was removed. Scenes where Japanese witnesses make explicit connections between the creature and the bombing of Hiroshima were cut, and the whole film was given a saccharine-feeling ending. So instead of a metaphor for the consequences of humanity’s destructive capabilities, Western audiences were treated to a camp monster movie that had little additional meaning.  

“Most Americans think if you left the movie in tears, it was just because you laughed so hard,” William Tsutsui, author of Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters, told NBC Asian America in 2020.

This separation between Western interpretations and the original meaning intended for Godzilla was not incidental. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, America entered World War 2 and its attitude towards the Japanese became characterized by aggression and a desire for vengeance. Contemporary propaganda represented the Japanese people as being inherently savage, dangerous, and Otherly in a way that differed in type and extreme to how even Germans and Italians – both enemies of America during the war – were depicted.

After Germany surrendered in May 1945, the focus of the war shifted to the Pacific theater where fighting against Japan not only continued but saw the American government ramping up its dehumanizing rhetoric against the Japanese people. All this eventually culminated in the atomic bombs being dropped in August of that year.

Then, three months later, Fortune magazine published a Roper poll concerning American attitudes towards the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which found that only 5 percent of the public opposed the attacks while 22.7 percent believed the military should have dropped more bombs before Japan had a chance to surrender. It was largely this entrenched vengeful attitude towards Japan that saw the original Godzilla being separated from the post-war grief it was intended to embody, as an American audience would not have been sympathetic to such a portrayal in relation to a people they had been encouraged to hate for so many years.

None of this is to sound one-sided, incidentally, as Japanese anti-American propaganda was just as inflammatory during the war, but it ultimately led to Godzilla taking on different trajectories in both contexts. But, like all good monsters, an assessment of its appearance is filled with plenty of metaphors for the society that creates it.

New ages, new enemies 

1960s Japan was a different place from what it had been a decade before. The post-war American occupation had ended, and the country was in the midst of a full economic recovery. As new generations emerged and people moved away from the grief of the past, attitudes toward America also softened. This change in the cultural mood was reflected in Godzilla, who also started to mellow out as time went on. In 1962’s King Kong Vs. Godzilla, the giant lizard is still a villain but the Japanese seek a non-nuclear solution to dealing with it – encouraging King Kong to fight the monster instead. This move is also present in 1964’s Mothra Vs Godzilla, when the giant moth is persuaded to intercede on humanity’s behalf.

But after this, Godzilla becomes a more heroic figure, albeit a reluctant one. In 1964’s Ghidrah, The Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla allies with Mothra to fight Ghidrah while similar occurs in Invasion of Astro-Monster in 1965. By the end of the decade, Godzilla has become a champion of humanity, facing various threats in the 1969 film All Monsters Attack and then aliens in Godzilla vs. Hedorah, in 1974.

This latter film is an example of how Godzilla had become almost a moral guardian of Japanese society. At the time, pollution was a serious concern for Japan, especially after the public became aware that the fertilizer company, Chisso Corporation, had dumped an estimated 27 tons of methyl mercury into the Shiranui Sea in the years between 1932 and 1968. In Godzilla vs. Hedorah, the heroic giant lizard fights an extraterrestrial blob that feeds on human-made toxic waste. Once the creature is defeated, there is even a scene where Godzilla pulls a load of waste from its hide and looks at it before breaking the fourth wall to stare at the audience with contempt.

Then, at the height of the Cold War, Godzilla returned to its original role as the embodiment of the nuclear threat. In the 1985 film Godzilla, the monster triggers an international crisis after it attacks a Soviet submarine. Both the US and the Soviet Union pressure Japan into letting them fire nuclear weapons at the monster, but the film allows Japan to articulate its non-nuclear stance when its fictitious prime minister refuses the superpowers. However, the Soviets accidentally fire a nuclear weapon that is aimed at Tokyo, which forces Japan to rely on the US to intercept the missile. Eventually, Godzilla is lured into an active volcano, easing political tensions and preventing further nuclear disasters.

The situation in American cinema took a very different, though no less significant, direction over the decades. This is likely due to America’s own ongoing ambiguous relationship to its nuclear past and the prominent role these weapons still play in its domestic and geopolitical landscape.

For example, in the 1998 adaptation, Godzilla, with Matthew Broderick, the monster was created by a H-bomb test in Polynesia, but it was a test carried out by the French military, rather than the Americans (no need for any deep soul-searching regarding its origins). Then, when the monster was rampaging through Manhattan, it was portrayed as an enemy that must be stopped at any cost for humanity’s sake, even if meant a nuclear strike (ultimately it did not).

In Gareth Edwards’ 2014 Godzilla, this ambiguous relationship towards nuclear weapons is extended to nuclear power more generally. In this case, Godzilla and its enemies, the M.U.T.O.s (massive unidentified terrestrial organisms) feed on and are sustained by nuclear radiation from a reactor. Very quickly, the military plans to lure the M.U.T.O’s to an isolated location with a nuclear missile, which they will then detonate to destroy the monsters, but the creatures use it to incubate their nest. Clearly, this presents a cautionary view toward nuclear power, but what of Godzilla itself?

In its modern American adaptations, Godzilla is portrayed as a devastating force of nature. It’s cold and indifferent to humans, devastating entire cities as it moves through them, much like a hurricane or earthquake. In this sense, the King of Monsters becomes a metaphor for natural disasters. Within these films, humans – especially shadowy institutions, private corporations or the military – stir up trouble by trying to overcome or eliminate the creature for their own gain, which always ends badly (2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monster and 2021’s Godzilla vs Kong).

In this respect, the message could be seen as a warning against government interference and institutional hubris, but it doesn’t offer anything constructive for dealing with the “monster” we unleashed. Perhaps this is a fitting metaphor for the kind of fatalism many people have towards climate change – when the monster visits your city, you have to just let it go on its way and hope it doesn’t step on you.  

Godzilla eating its tail

Over the last 70 years, Godzilla’s ability to embody various societal and cultural anxieties concerning potential existential threats has clearly kept it relevant for new generations of audiences, both in Japan and in Western cinemas. But has the monster truly outgrown its original form as a metaphor for nuclear weapons? Not according to last year’s Oscar-winning Godzilla Minus One, directed by Takashi Yamazaki.

In this most recent adaptation, Godzilla has returned to its terrible roots, bringing with it a renewed examination of Japan’s post-war grief, guilt, and the horrors of war. In this version, Godzilla first attacks a Japanese military base on Odo Island in 1945 and then later reappears as a mutated monster that has been powered up by American nuclear weapons tests at Bikini Atoll. From there, the creature starts to make its way to Japan where it will wreak utter devastation on its population.

Godzilla Minus One has been hailed as a complex narrative balancing the monster-smooshes- stuff elements that everyone wants to see with the pathos of a human story, but it has also brought the nuclear issue back to attention. And it was a timely reminder. In 2023, the world spent what amounted to a record-breaking $250 Million a day on nuclear weapons. Similarly, at the start of this year, the Doomsday Clock – the symbolic representation of how close we are to a human-made global catastrophe – stayed at 90 seconds to midnight (the point of disaster) for a second year, the closest it has ever been. The decision to do so was based on our inability to take meaningful action against climate change, the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine the worsening crisis in the Middle East, and the deteriorating efforts to reduce the world’s nuclear stockpile.

Finally, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki for their decades-long work in warning against the dangers of nuclear war.

It is no surprise that Godzilla Minus One has been received with such acclaim, given this current global situation. The coming years will undoubtedly see many significant and monstrous challenges ahead of us; the question remains as to whether we face the monster head-on or let it rampage unchecked.